WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:20.720 We are really excited about this conference because it is an effort to begin the process 00:20.720 --> 00:26.040 of putting into practice something that the United Nations has asked all communities and 00:26.040 --> 00:33.360 all countries to do and that is to put the pursuit of happiness using the term from Jefferson 00:33.360 --> 00:38.560 to put the pursuit of happiness at the head of their national programs instead of simply 00:38.560 --> 00:45.200 the gross domestic product to seek ways to improve happiness within their countries and 00:45.200 --> 00:50.600 their communities and also to seek ways to measure their success in those endeavors and 00:50.600 --> 00:57.080 we are going to talk quite a lot about that here as well. So this is a very exciting thing 00:57.080 --> 01:03.080 for us to start that process moving in the United States. In doing so we have also been 01:03.080 --> 01:08.200 working with GNH Gross National Happiness USA in Vermont. They have had a couple of 01:08.200 --> 01:14.040 conferences already and you will hear a little bit later in the program from Tom Barefoot 01:14.040 --> 01:21.880 from Gross National Happiness USA. You probably will hear from people off and on and we always 01:21.880 --> 01:29.560 do when we say what we are trying to do is measure happiness and change policies so that 01:29.560 --> 01:36.400 our policies are centered on improving happiness and not simply economic growth or the amount 01:36.400 --> 01:41.560 of stuff we consume. We often get this kind of reaction, happiness, so that seems like 01:41.560 --> 01:47.120 a flaky thing. And what does government have to do with happiness? It can't possibly be 01:47.120 --> 01:55.000 any matter of policy or of government. This is a common response and sometimes comes from 01:55.000 --> 01:59.780 academics who prefer the term well-being and I want to say that we use the terms happiness 01:59.780 --> 02:06.760 and well-being synonymously as the idea of a good life, a life well lived, a life in 02:06.760 --> 02:14.440 which we are satisfied in many of the important aspects of life and not simply again in how 02:14.440 --> 02:20.800 much money we make. So many of the academics frown a little bit on the word happiness. 02:20.800 --> 02:26.840 They think of it as momentary, hedonist pleasure, you know, just a little kind of worry about 02:26.840 --> 02:33.160 this. It's too touchy feely. We want well-being. Some of the policy makers that we talk to 02:33.160 --> 02:38.960 prefer the term quality of life. We mean all of those things. When we're talking about 02:38.960 --> 02:48.800 happiness we are talking in a large sense, in the sense of a satisfied life, a life of 02:48.800 --> 02:53.320 being active in the community involved and we'll get into many of those things later. 02:53.320 --> 03:00.360 So don't be shy about the word happiness. It's one thing that we want to say. If people 03:00.360 --> 03:07.640 say oh, that's something that came from somewhere else or that's a silly thing, tell them to 03:07.640 --> 03:15.320 talk to Thomas Jefferson. Tell them to talk to George Washington or John Adams, all three 03:15.320 --> 03:21.560 of whom mentioned that in their opinion improving the happiness of the population was the chief 03:21.560 --> 03:30.480 primary, in fact, sole orthodox purpose of government. So we live in a country, strangely 03:30.480 --> 03:34.360 enough, where people are troubled by the term happiness and the relation of happiness to 03:34.360 --> 03:40.560 government or policy, but that is precisely the idea, the principle that this country 03:40.560 --> 03:49.400 was founded on and we do not have to back away from that. We need to affirm it over 03:49.400 --> 03:53.960 and over again. One of the ways that we'll do that next year, and we did some of that 03:53.960 --> 03:59.360 this year, particularly Tom Barefoot's group in Vermont, Maureen Wilt, you'll hear a little 03:59.360 --> 04:05.160 bit about that later today, was to celebrate Pursuit of Happiness Day on April 13th, which 04:05.160 --> 04:10.200 happens to be Thomas Jefferson's birthday. Next year we hope that that will be a really 04:10.200 --> 04:19.360 big kind of event that communities, colleges, and so forth will participate in all over 04:19.360 --> 04:24.840 the country. And the work of the Happiness Initiative and Laura Mieczakanski's work, 04:24.840 --> 04:30.200 there was just a training session here for many folks prior to the conference, to get 04:30.200 --> 04:34.800 this out into the communities, to begin to see how to measure it, how to do it, how to 04:34.800 --> 04:41.320 create it. I think all of you will find something fascinating in that and hearing about that 04:41.320 --> 04:50.640 and becoming part of the Happiness Initiative. When we think about what makes us happy, it 04:50.640 --> 04:57.560 turns out that it is not, again, simply money, but many things that have to do with especially 04:57.560 --> 05:06.400 social connection, community connection, gratitude, generosity, sharing, altruism, but also simple 05:06.400 --> 05:10.920 things like what kind of environment we live in, what kind of access to nature we have, 05:10.920 --> 05:17.000 what kind of access to arts and culture and recreation we have, what kind of health we 05:17.000 --> 05:23.600 have. And you will learn about all of these things as this conference continues and you 05:23.600 --> 05:30.120 will see the importance of the work of the tiny country of Bhutan, a little place of 05:30.120 --> 05:37.040 750,000 people, little tiny country, smack between these big powers, China on the north 05:37.040 --> 05:44.740 and India on the south, where some 40 years ago the king, Jingming Wangchuk, just being 05:44.740 --> 05:50.800 crowned on the death of his father, only 16 years old, said, I was asked by an Australian 05:50.800 --> 05:55.640 senator, what are you going to do to increase your country's gross national product? And 05:55.640 --> 06:03.080 King Wangchuk said, well, in my opinion, sir, humbly, gross national happiness is more important 06:03.080 --> 06:08.360 than gross national product. You know, as we say, kids say the strangest, the darndest 06:08.360 --> 06:13.920 things, but nonetheless, he was speaking, I think, a lot of truth and Bhutan has tried 06:13.920 --> 06:18.040 to put that into place to learn how to do it and those are some of the things we are 06:18.040 --> 06:22.880 also going to learn about. One of the things that we know is important, and this has a 06:22.880 --> 06:29.600 lot to do with the work I've been doing over the years, to happiness is a sense of time 06:29.600 --> 06:36.640 balance, a sense of not constantly being frantic and rushed and overworked and pushed. And 06:36.640 --> 06:41.560 so I want to mention that this conference here at Seattle U is the first one I've been 06:41.560 --> 06:46.680 at and been involved in at Seattle U for three years, and the last one three years ago in 06:46.680 --> 06:55.680 2009 we had a vacation, national vacation summit here at Seattle University. And I don't 06:55.680 --> 06:59.560 know how many of you know it, but of course this is the summer and it's vacation time, 06:59.560 --> 07:05.160 but Americans really get less vacation time than people in virtually any other country 07:05.160 --> 07:10.560 in the world. For example, there are only five, count them, five countries in the entire 07:10.560 --> 07:17.560 world that do not guarantee at least some paid vacation time for workers. In addition 07:17.560 --> 07:24.700 to the United States, those other four countries are Suriname and Guyana, some of you may not 07:24.700 --> 07:30.400 even know where Suriname and Guyana are, but in any case Suriname, Guyana, Nepal and that 07:30.400 --> 07:36.040 paragon of human rights, Burma or Myanmar. That's it. Those are the only countries along 07:36.040 --> 07:42.280 with the U.S. that do not have a law providing vacation time. And so at that time we proposed 07:42.280 --> 07:47.840 that sort of thing saying people like time. Gallup poll for example shows that Americans 07:47.840 --> 07:54.400 are, are you ready for this? I mean this is going to come to, I think as a shock to some 07:54.400 --> 08:04.440 of you, but Gallup shows that Americans are 20% happier on weekends than on workdays. 08:04.440 --> 08:11.640 And they are 30 to 40% happier on holidays than on workdays. But we are told that, you 08:11.640 --> 08:17.760 know, nose to the grindstone, we can't have this kind of thing. So we, we had the temerity 08:17.760 --> 08:24.080 to propose in Congress in 2009 a bill which was introduced by Congressman Alan Grayson 08:24.080 --> 08:28.800 of Florida called the Paid Vacation Act. It was a very modest proposal. It would have 08:28.800 --> 08:35.120 given one to two weeks of paid time off by law to all American workers depending on the 08:35.120 --> 08:40.400 size of the businesses that they work for or companies that they work for. And right 08:40.400 --> 08:47.640 now almost a third of American workers don't get paid vacation. And the median number of 08:47.640 --> 08:52.720 paid vacation days that American workers take in a year is somewhere around seven. This 08:52.720 --> 08:58.600 is like nothing compared to the rest of the world. So we, we proposed this modest proposal. 08:58.600 --> 09:03.840 Congressman Grayson introduced it into Congress in 2009. Some of us were there. You would 09:03.840 --> 09:09.680 have thought from the reaction that we were demanding the end of Western civilization 09:09.680 --> 09:15.800 as we know it. The responses were things like this, oh my God, they're going to make America 09:15.800 --> 09:22.600 a nation of slackers. How can we ever compete in the global economy if people have vacation 09:22.600 --> 09:30.280 time not withstanding the fact that everybody we compete with does have it. And some of 09:30.280 --> 09:36.520 them went so far as to say, one of the bloggers had a, one I really loved and he said, they're 09:36.520 --> 09:52.520 trying to turn America into a 21st century, what country? France. Oh my God. Oh, France. 09:52.520 --> 10:01.240 They're trying to turn America into a 21st century France. As if we were all going to 10:01.240 --> 10:09.360 be forced to appreciate good food and wine. But this is it. I think what this indicates 10:09.360 --> 10:16.400 is that there's something in our culture today and certainly something in our economic system 10:16.400 --> 10:23.560 and the pressure and the fear that it causes for people that says happiness doesn't matter. 10:23.560 --> 10:27.800 Pleasure doesn't matter. Enjoying yourself. Any of these things don't matter. Having the 10:27.800 --> 10:32.640 time to spend with your family and your community to take care of your health. All of these 10:32.640 --> 10:42.080 things are a waste of time. And indeed, if we use gross domestic products as our key 10:42.080 --> 10:49.200 measure of success as a country, and we do, if we do, then in fact these things are a 10:49.200 --> 10:54.080 waste of time. Because what does gross national product or gross domestic product, as we call 10:54.080 --> 11:01.680 it today, measure? It measures the total market value of all goods and services produced in 11:01.680 --> 11:09.000 the economy in a given year. The market value, what they can be sold for, the dollar value. 11:09.000 --> 11:13.600 So what counts? Well, some of the things that count are things like oil spills. They're 11:13.600 --> 11:20.320 good for the GDP because they require us to have expensive cleanups and they require us 11:20.320 --> 11:26.220 to spend lots of money on legal bills. They add more to the GDP than if the oil made it 11:26.220 --> 11:32.720 safely to the refinery. Same thing for diseases. The more cancer there is, the more expensive 11:32.720 --> 11:42.880 treatment, GDP goes up. Divorce, two households, more legal bills, GDP goes up. But what doesn't 11:42.880 --> 11:50.200 count for GDP? Well, some of those things that we know make us happiest and healthiest. 11:50.200 --> 11:56.560 The time we spend with family and friends, that's a waste of time. No money is spent. 11:56.560 --> 12:02.540 So a waste of time as far as the GDP is concerned. Growing our gardens, something that really 12:02.540 --> 12:07.680 gives a lot of pleasure to people and additionally is good for their health. Taking a walk out 12:07.680 --> 12:12.560 in the woods if you don't spend money in an expensive health club doesn't do a darn thing 12:12.560 --> 12:19.120 for the GDP. Volunteering in your community, absolutely essential to our health and our 12:19.120 --> 12:25.280 welfare as a nation doesn't count. But this is the primary measurement. We hear it all 12:25.280 --> 12:33.080 the time, the GDP went up so much this quarter, etc., etc. We need a different measure of 12:33.080 --> 12:39.560 success. The UN has stated it. They say we need a different economic paradigm. And that 12:39.560 --> 12:45.280 is partly the purpose of this conference, is a strategy session to come together and 12:45.280 --> 12:50.960 say what do we want to measure success by? How do we do it differently? How can we not 12:50.960 --> 12:57.360 only create new measurements but how can we create new ways forward so that instead of 12:57.360 --> 13:05.120 being as we are now in the United States the least healthy of all rich countries, we can 13:05.120 --> 13:09.880 be near the top in that category. And this may come as a surprise but though Americans 13:09.880 --> 13:16.920 spend twice as much money as people in any other rich country on health care, in fact 13:16.920 --> 13:24.680 we spend nearly half the entire health care budget of the world. We have the least results 13:24.680 --> 13:32.280 to show for it. We are according to the CIA world fact book, the CIA now we're talking, 13:32.280 --> 13:39.760 the CIA world fact book, we rank 50th in life expectancy right behind Bosnia and right above 13:39.760 --> 13:48.520 Albania. We are number one and number two in obesity so that's one thing. But it is 13:48.520 --> 13:54.600 also the case that if you live in the United States today you have almost twice as much 13:54.600 --> 14:02.160 chance after the age of 50 of suffering from heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 14:02.160 --> 14:07.960 diabetes, arthritis and cancer than you would have if you live in Europe. These figures 14:07.960 --> 14:15.720 from a long term study by Emory University reported by the Los Angeles Times. So we're 14:15.720 --> 14:22.480 pressured, we're seeing the wrong things in terms of our welfare. We believe somehow 14:22.480 --> 14:28.280 that just piling on the stuff, piling on the GDP is going to make us happy, healthy and 14:28.280 --> 14:35.560 wise it ain't so. And the science shows that and the science is good and in the last couple 14:35.560 --> 14:41.380 of years we've had some 30,000 peer reviewed articles published on the subject of happiness. 14:41.380 --> 14:47.520 We are learning a lot about this. You will hear about this. So let me say, let me kind 14:47.520 --> 14:55.680 of bring this to a close and talk to you, take you back and say that, I guess the way 14:55.680 --> 15:02.680 to say it is that what a difference a hundred years doesn't make. But if we go back to 15:02.680 --> 15:09.520 1912 we see that some of the same conversations about our welfare as a nation, about the things 15:09.520 --> 15:19.520 we needed, the things related to the empowerment of women, of immigrants, of a minimum wage, 15:19.520 --> 15:26.080 of healthcare for people, all of those things were being debated in 1912, the year that 15:26.080 --> 15:31.160 the progressive party began. And one of the things that was really talked about in those 15:31.160 --> 15:40.740 days too was the whole issue of time. So in early 1912 thousands of workers left the textile 15:40.740 --> 15:48.040 mills of Lawrence, Massachusetts, January 11th, 1912 to march in the snowy streets of 15:48.040 --> 15:55.280 that city asking for an increase in their salary from 16 to 18 cents an hour and a decrease 15:55.280 --> 16:04.480 in their hours worked from 56 to 54 a week. The slogan it said that these women, most 16:04.480 --> 16:11.680 of them women, most of them immigrants, carried in banners before them as they marched was 16:11.680 --> 16:19.640 we want bread and roses too. And I think the GDP measures the bread. I think the bread 16:19.640 --> 16:25.480 is about the money, the higher wages. They needed that. They wanted that for their kids. 16:25.480 --> 16:32.760 You know? And we still speak of bread colloquially in those terms as money. But they said we 16:32.760 --> 16:39.800 need roses too. We need all those things that makes life worthwhile that aren't measured 16:39.800 --> 16:46.600 in stuff and in money. We need health. We need time, time for art and love and beauty. 16:46.600 --> 16:54.960 Their drudging spirits never knew as the poem from that day puts it. And what seems to have 16:54.960 --> 17:00.680 happened to me in this country is that in a hundred years we've forgotten what we knew 17:00.680 --> 17:08.420 in 1912. We knew that we needed bread but we needed roses too. We let the roses wilt 17:08.420 --> 17:16.000 and I think it's time to water them again. Now we are in troubled times not just because 17:16.000 --> 17:22.160 we're not happy or we're not healthy but also because we're putting a lot of strain on the 17:22.160 --> 17:27.800 planet. How many of you remember the most kind of famous incident from 1912? Anybody 17:27.800 --> 17:34.960 want to call that out? Anybody? What was that thing that happened? A big ship. The biggest 17:34.960 --> 17:44.680 ship ever built. The unsinkable, the invincible, the magnificent Titanic left the port of South 17:44.680 --> 17:54.200 Hampton in Britain and sailed to the Americas on its maiden voyage and in the middle of 17:54.200 --> 18:04.080 the night near Greenland it was humbled by a block of ice and sent to a watery grave 18:04.080 --> 18:12.680 at the bottom of the North Atlantic Ocean killing 1500 people and proving that bigger 18:12.680 --> 18:22.760 isn't always better and that nature bats last. And we today I think are living in a Titanic. 18:22.760 --> 18:29.080 We have an economy that is a Titanic that believes that simply getting bigger, getting 18:29.080 --> 18:35.000 stronger, getting all of those kinds of things is what works for us and what works for our 18:35.000 --> 18:40.400 lives. We got to turn that ship around. We're not going to run into an iceberg this time. 18:40.400 --> 18:47.600 We're more likely to be sunk by growing inequality, war, or climate change. But we've got some 18:47.600 --> 18:54.160 important things to do. We need the new economic paradigm that the country of Bhutan and the 18:54.160 --> 19:02.920 United Nations have called for in commencing and putting forth their call for all countries 19:02.920 --> 19:09.960 to make the pursuit of happiness their goal and to find ways to measure them. So thanks 19:09.960 --> 19:18.440 to all of you. I'm really excited. Of course, like every conference, two weeks ago we expected 19:18.440 --> 19:23.360 an audience about half this size. And I'm excited about what we are going to do. I think 19:23.360 --> 19:28.780 this is a really significant gathering. Thank you so much. 19:28.780 --> 19:33.880 I want to start by saying it's definitely an honor to be here, to have an opportunity 19:33.880 --> 19:39.000 to talk to you a little bit about the survey that we developed. It really was a collaborative 19:39.000 --> 19:46.920 effort, many phone calls, lots of discussion about item selection. I'll try the best I 19:46.920 --> 19:55.280 can to make psychometrics fun. Anyone else a psychometrician in here? All right. You 19:55.280 --> 20:01.480 and I, we're going to love this. A couple of things I want to talk a little bit about. 20:01.480 --> 20:05.720 I forgot I should have an introductory slide a little bit about myself. I consider myself 20:05.720 --> 20:09.960 really a positive consumer psychologist would be the sort of easiest way to think about 20:09.960 --> 20:13.720 what I do, trying to look at what we spend our money on and what will ultimately make 20:13.720 --> 20:21.200 us happy. I liked the idea mentioned earlier about sort of getting involved in a way in 20:21.200 --> 20:25.600 which you feel your strengths. That's something that was brought home to me in my liberal 20:25.600 --> 20:31.400 arts education. And so what I'm good at is measuring things. So that's sort of how I 20:31.400 --> 20:38.520 got involved. I do run a website, beyondthepurchase.org. One of the things that I would definitely advocate 20:38.520 --> 20:44.280 is that there are lots of places out there where people are collecting data, NEF, HI, 20:44.280 --> 20:50.200 GNHI, USA, Beyond the Purchase. And if you run across one of these websites, I really 20:50.200 --> 20:53.680 hope that you'll take some time to answer some of the questions on there because it 20:53.680 --> 20:57.440 really helps us begin to understand a little bit about what we're trying to measure. So 20:57.440 --> 21:03.800 I just implore you, again, take surveys. They help. One of the things I want to sort of 21:03.800 --> 21:06.680 end with, and I want to sort of bring it up right here in the beginning to make sure, 21:06.680 --> 21:11.000 because I don't think I did a good job of this in the slides, is that one of the things 21:11.000 --> 21:15.520 we really need to begin to discuss in this conference is a little bit about sort of what 21:15.520 --> 21:20.480 types of well-being we value or what are sort of our beliefs in well-being. And that we're 21:20.480 --> 21:24.880 beginning to see that different people from different walks of life really value different 21:24.880 --> 21:28.880 aspects of happiness. And I think that's one of the big messages you'll see here is that 21:28.880 --> 21:33.300 happiness isn't really a singular construct. It's multiple constructs sort of pulled together 21:33.300 --> 21:38.200 at the same time. And that you may really want different parts of happiness out of your 21:38.200 --> 21:44.060 life. I guess the easiest way to sort of think about this in the beginning and what we started 21:44.060 --> 21:47.960 to do with the survey is say that, you know, happiness is lots of different types of things. 21:47.960 --> 21:51.520 This is definitely the Bhutanese model of sort of what happiness is or what subjective 21:51.520 --> 21:55.960 well-being is. And I want to sort of point out the importance of measuring all these 21:55.960 --> 21:59.400 different types of constructs. And I'll try and go quickly through sort of how we got 21:59.400 --> 22:03.160 here. Because if you have taken the survey, you may ask yourself, how did those items 22:03.160 --> 22:04.160 come to be? 22:04.160 --> 22:08.360 So the first part is that there's essentially 10 major types of domains of well-being you 22:08.360 --> 22:12.240 might think of. Psychological well-being, which could also be called flourishing if 22:12.240 --> 22:16.280 you want to think of it from the literature. Self-reported physical health, time balance, 22:16.280 --> 22:23.640 safety, vitality, social connectedness, access to education and culture, environmental quality 22:23.640 --> 22:30.760 or the feeling that your environment is nice around you, a process in the democratic process, 22:30.760 --> 22:35.040 material well-being and work experience. And so where we started, or where my lab started 22:35.040 --> 22:37.880 in particular, is there's a lot of people that are trying to measure a lot of these 22:37.880 --> 22:43.200 different types of constructs. And so we just started generating a list of different organizations 22:43.200 --> 22:47.760 in different places where at least one of those constructs is being measured. And you 22:47.760 --> 22:51.200 can see that there's tons of places out there. Actually, one of the best, if you can actually 22:51.200 --> 22:54.600 get a hold of it, it's pretty easy, but you sometimes have to search through Google for 22:54.600 --> 22:59.040 a little bit, is the Detroit Area Survey from 2001. They do actually a really interesting 22:59.040 --> 23:04.320 job of measuring probably closer to quality of place instead of sort of well-being. And 23:04.320 --> 23:06.960 so basically what we did is we sort of read through these and we said, okay, so which 23:06.960 --> 23:11.440 are the items that are measuring psychological well-being as based on the definitions that 23:11.440 --> 23:18.120 have been provided both by Bhutan and at the time, HI. And many of you may remember this 23:18.120 --> 23:22.120 because John and Laura were basically begging you to take this really, really long hour-long 23:22.120 --> 23:26.240 survey and most of you complained about it and you probably should have because it was 23:26.240 --> 23:33.080 very long. It was 450 items and there were at least 500 people who volunteered their 23:33.080 --> 23:38.960 time because as Laura said, we didn't exactly have any money. So we were able to get tons 23:38.960 --> 23:43.640 of people to begin to answer these questions and we basically began to select items that 23:43.640 --> 23:47.260 are most representative of that construct. And so real quickly, not to bore you too much 23:47.260 --> 23:50.640 with the psychometrics, they have to have high factor loadings, which means they're 23:50.640 --> 23:55.400 just correlated with the construct that we're interested in and they have to basically be 23:55.400 --> 24:01.420 correlated with the operational definitions that we're using to define the constructs. 24:01.420 --> 24:07.580 And so from that, we could actually cull down from the 450 to just a mere 150 items. But 24:07.580 --> 24:12.280 John and Laura said that you have to make it fewer items than that. So then what we 24:12.280 --> 24:15.760 did is we said, okay, well, we need to get from 150 items down to something that's a 24:15.760 --> 24:21.720 little bit more manageable because even 150 items is quite often too many. So we put it 24:21.720 --> 24:26.120 up on MTURK and then we started using different types of validity measures where we're correlating 24:26.120 --> 24:29.760 it again with the operational definition. We're looking at the psychometric properties. Next 24:29.760 --> 24:34.880 slide. And we were able to actually get it down. I wanted to get it to each construct 24:34.880 --> 24:39.360 being just five items. Unfortunately, some of these constructs are very diffuse, specifically 24:39.360 --> 24:43.000 like social connectedness is not something that's as easy to measure with just a few 24:43.000 --> 24:46.080 items. Other things actually you probably could measure with fewer than five items. 24:46.080 --> 24:51.640 And we got it down to about five to seven items. And it wasn't just that we were using 24:51.640 --> 24:54.960 psychometric properties. And this is where some of the conversations came in. So they 24:54.960 --> 24:58.640 wanted to make sure that the breadth of the domain was actually being measured well and 24:58.640 --> 25:02.600 that we could actually begin to understand, are we really getting what we consider to 25:02.600 --> 25:07.600 be time balance? Are we really getting all the facets of social connectedness? Also something 25:07.600 --> 25:11.440 that was brought up a lot in my lab is to make sure that the face validity or the readability 25:11.440 --> 25:16.000 of the items made sense to individuals. And so all of this went into reducing it down 25:16.000 --> 25:23.360 from 150 items down to about 65 total items. Next slide. And so again, we were able to 25:23.360 --> 25:28.680 put it up online. We did this twice. Again, by the way, Mechanical Turk is a great place 25:28.680 --> 25:33.240 to go make very little amounts of money doing boring things. People take surveys on there 25:33.240 --> 25:39.880 for us, which is very nice. So we were able to get this really nice short measure that 25:39.880 --> 25:46.200 we were able to then pay a little bit more money for and get it about 570 individuals 25:46.200 --> 25:54.240 from the US who are representative geographically, age, gender, political affiliation across 25:54.240 --> 25:57.040 the board. They're pretty much representing the United States. It's not really a random 25:57.040 --> 26:01.120 sample, though we can talk about this later. I don't really think there are any more realistic 26:01.120 --> 26:04.880 random samples because most people won't pick up the phone and talk to the Pew Research 26:04.880 --> 26:09.360 Center anymore. But we did get something that was very, very representative of the United 26:09.360 --> 26:10.360 States. 26:10.360 --> 26:14.280 And so here's really the point that I want to make. I mean, John asked me to give some 26:14.280 --> 26:18.480 of the highlights of the survey. And so I wanted to talk a little bit about why is it 26:18.480 --> 26:23.920 so important to measure more than just one construct of well-being? Well, one of the 26:23.920 --> 26:30.680 things that you consistently hear is that Denmark is the happiest country in the world. 26:30.680 --> 26:35.280 And that's true if you look at the single measure that they're using to measure happiness, 26:35.280 --> 26:39.400 which is Cantrell's Ladder. Basically, where are you on the ladder of life? You start to 26:39.400 --> 26:43.560 use other measures, other countries move up, other countries move down. And so it really 26:43.560 --> 26:47.440 depends on sort of what you're looking at. And so what I noticed was that there are a 26:47.440 --> 26:50.600 couple of things that we wanted to be able to look at. And I wanted to show you a couple 26:50.600 --> 26:54.920 of things that I think are really interesting about this survey. So the next slide. 26:54.920 --> 26:59.560 The first is, and this is a really messy slide. I probably won't spend a ton of time on it. 26:59.560 --> 27:04.520 One of the things that we can do actually is begin to make sure that we have items that 27:04.520 --> 27:08.640 are used on the same response scale. And that allows us to begin to rank order what people 27:08.640 --> 27:11.880 say they're most and least satisfied with. And you can begin to see some of these types 27:11.880 --> 27:12.880 of things make sense. 27:12.880 --> 27:16.440 A little bit surprising to me, to be quite honest with you, but this probably has to 27:16.440 --> 27:20.200 do more with your local area. Most people are actually really satisfied with the environmental 27:20.200 --> 27:26.160 quality of their neighborhood. The least satisfied were the transparency of their local government. 27:26.160 --> 27:29.480 That was where their least satisfied were. They're also not very satisfied with their 27:29.480 --> 27:33.520 financial situation, their work situation, their physical health, their leisure time, 27:33.520 --> 27:34.520 et cetera. 27:34.520 --> 27:37.400 And so one of the things that we can begin to do is we can begin to sort of rank order. 27:37.400 --> 27:41.920 We can see that there are places where there are deficiencies and there are places where 27:41.920 --> 27:45.200 we're sort of doing well. And so that's one thing that we can do when we take a more holistic 27:45.200 --> 27:49.520 approach to happiness is not to say that who's happy and who's not, but really begin to see 27:49.520 --> 27:54.040 a sort of profile of well-being. Where are certain communities most efficient and where 27:54.040 --> 27:55.040 are they excelling? 27:55.040 --> 28:00.640 So that's one of the major reasons to have more than just one domain. Next slide. 28:00.640 --> 28:03.760 Here's something that I found, literally this is from the plane today when I was flying 28:03.760 --> 28:08.440 up here. John mentioned this I shouldn't have called. This should be like age and well-being 28:08.440 --> 28:11.900 would have been a better way to describe this. So subjective well-being, these are the three 28:11.900 --> 28:16.000 items that are typically used when you hear about those national rankings. So these are 28:16.000 --> 28:21.680 the latter questions basically. And what you notice is that age and subjective well-being 28:21.680 --> 28:26.640 in this data set are not related. Age is also not related to psychological well-being or 28:26.640 --> 28:32.060 physical health or social connected or governance. So you might begin to think, well age has 28:32.060 --> 28:38.000 nothing to do with well-being. Next slide. It does because there's a huge difference 28:38.000 --> 28:43.960 in age and time balance. There's a difference in age and community vitality, access to education, 28:43.960 --> 28:47.440 community of place, environmental quality, and material well-being. And I'll go through 28:47.440 --> 28:50.840 these next slides relatively quickly just because they sort of show a picture that I 28:50.840 --> 28:55.880 think is sort of interesting. So here are actually the graphs. So this is time balance. 28:55.880 --> 29:00.000 Basically the least time balanced people are between the age of 38 and 42. So basically 29:00.000 --> 29:04.920 you're doing good in college, you hit your bottom, I guess you decide you don't want 29:04.920 --> 29:12.000 to be a workaholic and you go up. By the way most, if you're not 73, all right, if you're 29:12.000 --> 29:17.600 younger than 73, as YouTube says, it gets better. Okay? Because all of these are the 29:17.600 --> 29:23.160 same type of thing. These individuals as they aged, things went up. Next slide. But one 29:23.160 --> 29:26.720 of the things you'll also notice is that the pattern's not always the same. So here we 29:26.720 --> 29:30.360 see a, you know, I know that you can sort of like, you know, draw a line right there. 29:30.360 --> 29:34.560 It's really a sort of flat line until about 38 on community vitality. So people don't 29:34.560 --> 29:39.780 feel as connected with their communities until they get to about their mid-40s and then it 29:39.780 --> 29:46.000 takes off. Next slide. Same type of thing here. You actually, this is cultural access. 29:46.000 --> 29:50.800 So basically you really see that the under 22 group is really driving the drop there. 29:50.800 --> 29:53.760 It's just a nice linear effect that's going up. So people feel like that they're getting 29:53.760 --> 29:59.840 more access. Maybe they're getting more involved in their groups. Next slide. Next slide. Next 29:59.840 --> 30:03.560 slide. And so what you're seeing is that these patterns are different. And so there's 30:03.560 --> 30:07.160 two things I really want to point out here. One is that it's important to measure well-being 30:07.160 --> 30:14.160 because if you just use the measure that is typically used to indicate rankings at a national 30:14.160 --> 30:18.960 level, you would have said there's no relationship between age and happiness. But we see that 30:18.960 --> 30:24.120 there is one. It just depends on how you're measuring it. Next one. This was sort of interesting. 30:24.120 --> 30:27.640 I just wanted to pull this off because I know I've heard this a lot and a lot of my data 30:27.640 --> 30:31.240 doesn't back this up. So we wanted to try something a little bit different. Political 30:31.240 --> 30:35.220 groups and subjective well-being. You may hear that conservatives are actually happier 30:35.220 --> 30:39.600 with their lives than liberals. I think that actually is a really, really small effect 30:39.600 --> 30:43.960 and is bloated because we have a lot of people in there. But here's what was actually interesting 30:43.960 --> 30:47.640 is that political groups was not related, again, with subjective well-being, the typical 30:47.640 --> 30:51.560 single measure that's used, or a whole host of other things. But it was related with a 30:51.560 --> 30:56.940 couple of things. It was related with psychological well-being, which is a little bit different, 30:56.940 --> 31:01.760 time balance. Oh, and I'm sure John will like this. Time balance is the big, that's always 31:01.760 --> 31:07.720 related with everything. So be balanced in time. Time balance, community vitality, social 31:07.720 --> 31:12.560 connection, and access to education. Here's another example of where if you begin to look 31:12.560 --> 31:16.520 at a diversity of different types of definitions, you begin to see different types of pictures 31:16.520 --> 31:20.580 unfold. So next slide. And the first one is so it's conservative on the left, moderate 31:20.580 --> 31:24.200 in the middle, liberal on the right. This is the sort of pattern that we've come to 31:24.200 --> 31:28.720 expect. So psychological well-being, conservatives say they're flourishing more than moderates 31:28.720 --> 31:33.000 or liberals. But next slide. Now we actually see the opposite on time balance. Liberals 31:33.000 --> 31:37.600 say they have the most time balance compared to the other two groups. Next slide. Now we 31:37.600 --> 31:41.600 actually see this really weird sort of thing with moderates, meaning really the only group 31:41.600 --> 31:46.140 that doesn't feel like they're thriving in their communities. Next slide. And same type 31:46.140 --> 31:49.560 of thing with social connectedness. And so one of the things that I really want to sort 31:49.560 --> 31:56.440 of drive home in this time is that we spent, you know, like hundreds of hours, all of us, 31:56.440 --> 32:00.120 trying to figure out what is for the best, I think it's roughly about 65 questions to 32:00.120 --> 32:04.560 measure well-being. And the big point about that is that you need that much information 32:04.560 --> 32:09.080 so that you can begin to see these nice nuanced descriptions. Because if you're going to look 32:09.080 --> 32:13.520 at a community or a city or you're going to look at a nation, you really need a profile 32:13.520 --> 32:17.160 of well-being. You really need to be able to look at that. Because in some areas, people 32:17.160 --> 32:21.700 are going to be thriving and some areas they're not. And in some areas, there's going to be 32:21.700 --> 32:26.280 relationships with demographic variables and some areas they're not. And that's why I actually 32:26.280 --> 32:30.000 wanted you to write down your definitions of happiness and talk to the people that are 32:30.000 --> 32:34.000 at your table and try and see, just tell them you don't have to make something up that's 32:34.000 --> 32:38.200 new. Just tell them what your measure of happiness, I'm sorry, what your definition of happiness 32:38.200 --> 32:41.240 was. And I want you to hear the diversity of things that people are going to say around 32:41.240 --> 32:45.280 you. There will be some commonalities, but there will be some differences. 32:45.280 --> 32:50.840 I'll make this short, but Bob Costanza is really one of the leading ecological economists 32:50.840 --> 32:57.840 in the world. He's figured out how we measure the value of nature, of resources, of things 32:57.960 --> 33:04.960 that we don't include and haven't included in the GDP. How we figure out what those things 33:05.640 --> 33:12.160 mean to us. And he works in the field of ecosystem services. Right now, a professor at Portland 33:12.160 --> 33:17.680 State University. He was the head of the Gund Institute at the University of Vermont before 33:17.680 --> 33:24.560 that. And Bob has been a leader in the United Nations effort to create a new economic paradigm, 33:24.560 --> 33:31.560 was one of the key speakers at the conference in New York in April. 33:32.040 --> 33:38.040 The first slide just shows the website for this Wellbeing and Happiness event that was 33:38.040 --> 33:42.500 sponsored by the government of Bhutan back in April. It gives a little bit of detail 33:42.500 --> 33:49.500 about that. And the website there is listed. And as you probably know, Bhutan is really 33:51.040 --> 33:56.840 heavily invested in moving this agenda forward, of developing a new economic paradigm and 33:56.840 --> 34:02.280 development paradigm based on happiness and wellbeing. And I think that's going to be 34:02.280 --> 34:08.000 an important process over the coming years, and it will really bring these issues more 34:08.000 --> 34:13.400 to the fore, put them in front of many different levels of both government and non-governmental 34:13.400 --> 34:20.400 organizations. So this one should be telling you about practical problem solving requires 34:21.800 --> 34:26.040 integration of these three elements. And I want to focus a bit on the first one there, 34:26.040 --> 34:31.920 the idea of a vision. We have to have an adequate vision, not only of how the world works, our 34:31.920 --> 34:36.520 scientific approach, but also of how we would like the world to be, our goals for the future. 34:36.520 --> 34:42.560 I think this is where the sustainability and happiness and wellbeing agendas really come 34:42.560 --> 34:48.000 to the fore. We need to change our goals going forward for society. It's becoming clear that 34:48.000 --> 34:53.800 our current system is not sustainable, and it's also not desirable. And we're learning 34:53.800 --> 34:57.880 more about how the world works, scientific understanding of both the biophysical world, 34:57.880 --> 35:04.880 but also the human psychology. And the whole field of positive psychology is making advances 35:04.880 --> 35:11.880 there. So we need to integrate that understanding with our new vision of our goals and make 35:11.880 --> 35:16.680 appropriate tools and analytical techniques to move us forward in that direction, and 35:16.680 --> 35:21.880 also to devise institutions and policies and implementation strategies that are appropriate 35:21.880 --> 35:28.880 to this new vision. You have probably seen some version of this diagram where it's becoming 35:28.880 --> 35:35.880 clear that we are facing planetary boundaries or have exceeded our biophysical planetary 35:35.880 --> 35:41.180 boundaries, in particular climate change, biodiversity loss, nitrogen cycle, several 35:41.180 --> 35:46.060 others are approaching the safe operating space for humanity. This is based on the idea 35:46.060 --> 35:50.340 that we are approaching, if we haven't already crossed, some important tipping points in 35:50.340 --> 35:55.700 the biophysical environment. There are limits to our biophysical ecological life support 35:55.700 --> 36:01.900 system that are becoming better recognized and better understood. 36:01.900 --> 36:08.900 We also know that we're facing severe resource constraints, particularly oil and gas. And 36:09.460 --> 36:16.460 we can see from this one that we have probably already passed peak oil production globally. 36:16.380 --> 36:23.380 So the point is we are facing constraints both on the supply side and on the sink side 36:23.380 --> 36:30.380 of our current economic model. Go to the next slide. Now, you should be looking at a cartoon 36:30.380 --> 36:35.380 here showing people lining up to go to see a reassuring lie rather than an inconvenient 36:35.380 --> 36:40.380 truth. So the strategy in the past, I think, from the environmental movement and others 36:40.380 --> 36:46.380 has been to point out these problems with our boundaries, our resource constraints, 36:46.380 --> 36:53.380 et cetera, but not to really provide a compelling alternative movie to go and see where the 36:53.380 --> 36:57.380 world can be a better place rather than simply a place where we have to sacrifice some of 36:57.380 --> 37:02.380 the things that we already have. I think that's probably the most important thing we need 37:02.380 --> 37:08.380 to do to make the transition to a more sustainable and desirable future is to create this third 37:08.380 --> 37:13.380 movie that shows how we can all be better off, how we can all be happier, have a higher 37:13.380 --> 37:19.380 quality of life and well-being if we move in the right direction. This one quote by 37:19.380 --> 37:24.380 Thomas Friedman that, in fact, and some of the mainstream commentators are beginning 37:24.380 --> 37:29.380 to get the message that this recession that we're still in since 2008 is something more 37:29.380 --> 37:36.380 than just another recession. We're not going to get back to the business as usual status. 37:36.380 --> 37:42.380 In fact, business as usual has been called the usual recession. 37:42.380 --> 37:48.380 It's a utopian fantasy, not the kind of world that we're trying to create. The next slide 37:48.380 --> 37:54.380 shows the model that we're still operating under. Most policy decisions are made under 37:54.380 --> 38:02.380 the idea that we still live in an empty world where humans, the human economy can expand 38:02.380 --> 38:07.380 forever where more is always better, where these three major types of capital, land, 38:07.380 --> 38:13.380 labor and manufactured capital are all perfectly substitutable. We can't run out of natural 38:13.380 --> 38:17.380 resources and we can just keep growing the economy forever. The scale of the economy 38:17.380 --> 38:24.380 is not an issue. There are no planetary boundaries. We can solve all these problems with technology. 38:24.380 --> 38:29.380 Poverty can best be solved with more growth. Everything will trickle down. Nature is really 38:29.380 --> 38:34.380 a sideshow in this view of the world, and private property is always the best way to 38:34.380 --> 38:41.380 manage these kinds of resources. Individual utility, welfare, well-being is really mainly 38:41.380 --> 38:46.380 a function of the absolute level of consumption. The more we consume, the better off we are. 38:46.380 --> 38:53.380 Of course, that is the model that I think needs to be replaced. This is maybe a more 38:53.380 --> 38:59.380 accurate representation of what we now know about the role of the economy in quotes in 38:59.380 --> 39:06.380 the larger system, recognizing that this larger system is a materially closed one. Everything 39:06.380 --> 39:11.380 has to go somewhere. We can't continue to grow the economy in a material sense, a finite 39:11.380 --> 39:17.380 planet, that these four types of capital are all required in some balanced way to produce 39:17.380 --> 39:22.380 any kind of benefits or well-being for people, our natural, our human, our social and our 39:22.380 --> 39:27.380 manufactured capital. Certainly the social and human and natural capital components have 39:27.380 --> 39:33.380 been underplayed in the conventional economic thinking. Another important aspect is that 39:33.380 --> 39:38.380 human well-being at both the individual and the community scale is a much more complicated 39:38.380 --> 39:43.380 function than simply the more we consume, the better off we are. I think that's what 39:43.380 --> 39:48.380 this conference is here to talk about. The point I want to make with this diagram too 39:48.380 --> 39:54.380 is that in order to develop this sustainable well-being, we have to understand how this 39:54.380 --> 39:59.380 whole system functions. We can't remain too focused on any one element of it. We have 39:59.380 --> 40:03.380 to understand the connections between human well-being, the perception of that well-being, 40:03.380 --> 40:09.380 and the functioning of the rest of the biophysical and economic system. Next slide. 40:09.380 --> 40:15.380 So these are the elements that I think need to be incorporated in this research going 40:15.380 --> 40:21.380 forward. The subjective well-being side, which I think will be the focus of your meeting 40:21.380 --> 40:26.380 here, how do people perceive their happiness, their well-being, their welfare, and what 40:26.380 --> 40:33.380 are some ways of looking at that through surveys and other methods. Basic human needs that 40:33.380 --> 40:39.380 people are trying to fulfill, and there's a long list of those, goes well beyond subsistence 40:39.380 --> 40:45.380 and reproduction. It includes affection, understanding, participation. So this field of understanding 40:45.380 --> 40:50.380 what basic human needs are and how people weight the fulfillment of those needs to feel 40:50.380 --> 40:55.380 subjective satisfaction. But also, what are the opportunities that people have to meet 40:55.380 --> 40:59.380 those needs now and in the future. And that's where the analysis of our built human social 40:59.380 --> 41:05.380 and natural capital assets and how we use our time comes in. So all of these elements 41:05.380 --> 41:12.380 have subjective and objective components. And I think our challenge is really to integrate 41:12.380 --> 41:16.380 across this whole picture to get a better understanding of what quality of life well-being 41:16.380 --> 41:22.380 and happiness really is and how we can improve it in the future and how we can sustain it. 41:22.380 --> 41:27.380 Subjectively, there are limitations. People don't perceive everything that contributes 41:27.380 --> 41:33.380 to their well-being, particularly contributions from natural capital. They discount the future 41:33.380 --> 41:38.380 far too much. There's a lot of information out these days about human psychology and 41:38.380 --> 41:45.380 how we do perceive things. And we need to understand the limits of that perception, 41:45.380 --> 41:50.380 but also to adequately take it into account and try to move forward. Next slide. 41:50.380 --> 41:57.380 So this one should be in two parts. First, you see the planetary boundaries. If you advance 41:57.380 --> 42:02.380 one more slide, then you'll see the elements of human well-being within those planetary 42:02.380 --> 42:07.380 boundaries. And what we're trying to do is to meet all of those needs for health, for 42:07.380 --> 42:14.380 community, for education, fairness, identity, freedom, et cetera, ecosystem services. But 42:14.380 --> 42:18.380 stay within the planetary boundaries. So we have the sustainable and desirable doughnut, 42:18.380 --> 42:24.380 as it's been called by Oxfam. That is really our goal going forward. How do we get into 42:24.380 --> 42:31.380 and stay in the doughnut? We know that GDP and consumption affects life satisfaction 42:31.380 --> 42:39.380 subjectively up to a point. It saturates at a relatively low level of GDP per capita. 42:39.380 --> 42:44.380 And so we could all be much better off with some of the richer countries consuming less 42:44.380 --> 42:47.380 and allowing more space for some of the poor countries to consume more and getting the 42:47.380 --> 42:52.380 right balance between those four different types of capital. Shows how we measure well-being. 42:52.380 --> 42:58.380 We've been stuck on GDP as a measure, but it's really only designed as a measure of 42:58.380 --> 43:02.380 economic activity and only the marketed part of that. So we need to move from that sort 43:02.380 --> 43:07.380 of pink area that slides over into the blue and the green areas where we measure at least 43:07.380 --> 43:12.380 economic welfare, where we subtract the cost from the benefits. And ultimately, how do 43:12.380 --> 43:17.380 we measure human well-being, human welfare, how well human needs are actually being assessed, 43:17.380 --> 43:21.380 and some of the subjective survey methods that you're talking about will fit into that 43:21.380 --> 43:27.380 category. I won't go into details here. This is just what goes into one of these alternatives, 43:27.380 --> 43:34.380 the Genuine Progress Indicator, which is in the blue column. This is an economic welfare measure. 43:34.380 --> 43:38.380 But it's interesting because it has been calculated for several countries, and it shows very different 43:38.380 --> 43:43.380 results than traditional GDP. You can see all the things that are subtracted from GDP, 43:43.380 --> 43:47.380 that are currently in there, that shouldn't be, and a few things that are added to account 43:47.380 --> 43:54.380 for social capital, natural capital, and human capital components. This is how it looks for 43:54.380 --> 44:02.380 the U.S. over the last several decades. GDP has continued going up. GPI has leveled off 44:02.380 --> 44:06.380 in about 1975 and has remained relatively constant ever since then. So we're pursuing 44:06.380 --> 44:12.380 the wrong goals. We're looking for maximizing activity, GDP. We should be looking for maximizing 44:12.380 --> 44:18.380 genuine progress, well-being, sustainability, et cetera. GPI is not the perfect indicator, 44:18.380 --> 44:23.380 but it's certainly a lot better than the alternatives. Next slide shows a study we did in Vermont 44:23.380 --> 44:30.380 showing that their GPI continued to increase, even though the U.S. average was leveling off 44:30.380 --> 44:36.380 and going down. The next slide shows that Maryland has recently adopted the GPI as one 44:36.380 --> 44:43.380 of their official government indicators. It's the first official government body to do so. 44:43.380 --> 44:47.380 The state of Vermont has recently followed suit. In fact, they've legislated by mandate 44:47.380 --> 44:53.380 that the GPI will be calculated for Vermont. The next slide shows the Maryland website. 44:53.380 --> 44:57.380 They did a really good job of explaining this, I think, and so I encourage you to go take 44:57.380 --> 45:03.380 a look at their website. The next slide shows a study that we recently did for Oregon to 45:03.380 --> 45:11.380 calculate their GPI and compare that with Maryland and the U.S. in this slide, showing 45:11.380 --> 45:17.380 that Oregon was also increasing their GPI until about 2000 when it leveled off, even 45:17.380 --> 45:22.380 though the U.S. leveled off in about 1975. Maryland's been going up and down, but also 45:22.380 --> 45:28.380 has been turning downward towards the end. The next slide shows more recently we've been 45:28.380 --> 45:34.380 comparing countries according to a whole range of different indicators. This is just four 45:34.380 --> 45:39.380 countries that we've compared, the U.S., Sweden, China, and Poland, and it shows indicators 45:39.380 --> 45:46.380 of GPI, GDP, ecological footprint, biocapacity, and life satisfaction to show how they've 45:46.380 --> 45:50.380 been changing. You can see that in almost every case, GDP has been increasing. China 45:50.380 --> 45:59.380 is increasing phenomenally, but their GPI leveled off in around 1995, and their life 45:59.380 --> 46:06.380 satisfaction has been headed down in most cases, or at least level. 46:06.380 --> 46:11.380 The next slide shows the first estimate of the global GPI per capita. These are some 46:11.380 --> 46:16.380 preliminary numbers, but you can see that like the U.S., there was a peak in around 46:16.380 --> 46:23.380 1978 in this case, after which global GPI has actually decreased quite significantly. 46:23.380 --> 46:28.380 Again, GPI is not the perfect measure. I think we need to work more on better measures and 46:28.380 --> 46:32.380 more comprehensive measures of well-being, but it certainly gives a very different picture 46:32.380 --> 46:37.380 from what you normally see. The next slide shows the importance of income inequality 46:37.380 --> 46:42.380 to various measures of well-being from the work by Wilkinson and Pickett. You've probably 46:42.380 --> 46:47.380 all seen this. You can see the U.S. way out there on the upper right-hand corner. High 46:47.380 --> 46:54.380 income inequality, high index of social problems. So the solutions here are somewhat obvious. 46:54.380 --> 46:59.380 We need to work more on our social capital. We need to work more on our natural capital. 46:59.380 --> 47:05.380 We need to pursue genuine progress, sustainable well-being, rather than merely GDP and economic 47:05.380 --> 47:11.380 growth. So the next slide, the bottom line is this continued growth is not sustainable. 47:11.380 --> 47:15.380 We're bumping into planetary boundaries. It does not necessarily improve well-being, 47:15.380 --> 47:21.380 happiness, however you want to define it. And so we need to change our ways. 47:21.380 --> 47:28.380 The next slide shows that back to Bhutan, they've been very active in pursuing this in a whole 47:28.380 --> 47:33.380 range of different ways, both pursuing the subjective well-being surveys, but also more 47:33.380 --> 47:38.380 recently we were involved with them in trying to account for their natural capital assets 47:38.380 --> 47:44.380 and their ecosystem services. The next slide shows the initial, we did an initial estimate of 47:44.380 --> 47:50.380 those assets showing that they're very large, considerably larger than their GDP. And many of 47:50.380 --> 47:56.380 them are exported to people outside of Bhutan in the way of water supply and carbon sequestration, 47:56.380 --> 48:02.380 et cetera. Bhutan is committed to maintaining those services in perpetuity. 48:02.380 --> 48:09.380 The next slide shows a report that we just finished that might be a good, that I think is a 48:09.380 --> 48:15.380 good summary of some of these ideas. I encourage you to take a look at this. We recognize some of 48:15.380 --> 48:20.380 the co-authors there. What we hear here was how do we synthesize all of this information about 48:20.380 --> 48:25.380 what a sustainable and desirable economy embedded in society, embedded in nature actually looks 48:25.380 --> 48:30.380 like, what's our vision for that future, and what are some detailed policy recommendations for how 48:30.380 --> 48:37.380 we move towards that society. The next slide shows that yes, there will always be skeptics, 48:37.380 --> 48:42.380 and the guy in the back saying, yes, what if it's all a big hoax and we create this better world 48:42.380 --> 48:49.380 for nothing. So the point is, I think we need to refocus our attention much more on what that 48:49.380 --> 48:56.380 better world looks like and give people a positive vision of the future where their well-being and 48:56.380 --> 49:02.380 sustainability and fairness and all of those attributes that we're talking about are really 49:02.380 --> 49:09.380 there. But it's not enough to just do that in an analytical way. I think we have to present 49:09.380 --> 49:16.380 pictures and narratives and visions and movies and however we can communicate what that world 49:16.380 --> 49:23.380 might look like because people are motivated by a positive vision and there really isn't a coherent 49:23.380 --> 49:29.380 one out there. That has to be also developed, I think, in a shared way. The next slide shows 49:29.380 --> 49:36.380 that I think what some of the long-term solutions to this flourishing, human flourishing on a 49:36.380 --> 49:41.380 biophysically limited planet, we have to break our addiction to this growth at all cost economic 49:41.380 --> 49:49.380 paradigm. So it seems obvious that we should, but like any addiction, these things, you know, 49:49.380 --> 49:54.380 it's very difficult to break addictions. And the worst thing you can say to an addict is that, 49:54.380 --> 49:58.380 you know, they're just doing the wrong thing and they just have to stop and start doing something 49:58.380 --> 50:03.380 different. We get pushback and denial and just the kinds of things that we're getting at the 50:03.380 --> 50:08.380 societal level when we suggest that things have got to change quickly. So we have to take that into 50:08.380 --> 50:13.380 account and recognize that the way we frame things and that a positive framing and envisioning a 50:13.380 --> 50:18.380 more sustainable future that focuses on well-being, happiness, all the things that people really do 50:18.380 --> 50:24.380 want rather than just consumption, which most people understand they don't want necessarily more 50:24.380 --> 50:30.380 of, that's the way forward. Ultimately, we have to, it's going to require this completely new 50:30.380 --> 50:36.380 vision, new measures, new institutions, new technologies, a whole redesign, but it's certainly 50:36.380 --> 50:42.380 not a sacrifice to do that. It's a sacrifice not to. And next to the last slide just shows that we 50:42.380 --> 50:48.380 have some new venues for having that discussion of what a sustainable and desirable future might 50:48.380 --> 50:54.380 look like. And I hope you all take a look at this magazine, which is available for free online as 50:54.380 --> 50:59.380 well, and contribute your solutions to us. 50:59.380 --> 51:05.380 One of the most inspiring people was a man named Karma I met in Bhutan. Great name. I thought it 51:05.380 --> 51:10.380 was a good, I must have done something right in a previous lifetime to be meeting him. And Karma 51:10.380 --> 51:16.380 told me a few things that stuck with me. Karma had come from a village in Bhutan, yet was now the 51:16.380 --> 51:22.380 head of the biggest think tank in Bhutan, the only think tank, but still a very good one. And a very 51:22.380 --> 51:28.380 successful person, PhD from Cambridge University in the UK, and I said, Karma, what's your secret to 51:28.380 --> 51:34.380 your happiness and all of this? And he said, well, I've always had modest expectations. Modest 51:34.380 --> 51:40.380 expectations. But how can this be? You've achieved so much. And this is something that comes up time 51:40.380 --> 51:46.380 and again. There is an inverse relationship between happiness and expectations. The Danes, one of 51:46.380 --> 51:50.380 the happiest countries in the world, on the Eurobarometer survey, come up as having the lowest 51:50.380 --> 51:58.380 expectations of any European peoples. And a lot of people, especially in America, they kind of, 51:58.380 --> 52:05.380 they don't like this. They bristle at this notion of low expectations. Really, I'll explain it this 52:05.380 --> 52:11.380 way. I don't think it's low expectations. I think it's no expectations. In the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu 52:11.380 --> 52:18.380 holy book, Lord Krishna says to Arjuna, and I'm paraphrasing here, whatever you do, give it a 100% 52:18.380 --> 52:26.380 effort, 100%, but have exactly 0% invested in the results. Very difficult to do, but I think a key 52:26.380 --> 52:32.380 to happiness. The other thing that karma told me is that he could not understand this American 52:32.380 --> 52:38.380 notion of personal happiness. What is personal happiness, he said. Happiness is not personal. 52:38.380 --> 52:45.380 Happiness is 100% relational. And at the time I thought, well, 100% relational. That seems a bit 52:45.380 --> 52:51.380 high. Maybe he's just exaggerating to make a point. But I'm convinced that he meant exactly what he 52:51.380 --> 52:57.380 said. 100% relational. Our relationships with family and friends, yes, but with strangers, with 52:57.380 --> 53:04.380 colleagues, with neighbors, with the cleaning woman at our office whose name we don't even know. 53:04.380 --> 53:10.380 The last thing karma said kind of freaked me out because I was suffering from not only depression, 53:10.380 --> 53:15.380 but anxiety at the time. Wasn't that nice? He said, I could relax if I just thought about and 53:15.380 --> 53:21.380 contemplated death for five minutes every day. He is actually on to something. It's the avoidance of 53:21.380 --> 53:26.380 thinking about death that leads to anxiety. I thought five minutes was a bit too much. We agreed on 53:26.380 --> 53:35.380 like 30 seconds. What have I learned in my travels? A few things. One is that there is no one recipe 53:35.380 --> 53:43.380 for happiness. There is no one culture that has a lock on it. And in fact, as I mentioned with the 53:43.380 --> 53:48.380 difference between Icelanders and Moldovans, take the same substance, alcohol, two different views 53:48.380 --> 53:58.380 toward it. Or money. Switzerland. Very wealthy and happy. Qatar. Very wealthy, not happy. It's your 53:58.380 --> 54:06.380 relationship to it. Having said that, I think there are some universal lessons that do apply. 54:06.380 --> 54:15.380 The sort of base level of what you need to have a happy place. One, as I said, control envy. Squash it 54:15.380 --> 54:23.380 like a bug. Cultivate trust. Remember that happiness is not personal. It is relational. Connect to your 54:23.380 --> 54:29.380 past and also your future. Jonas Salk once asked what his goal in life was and he said to be a good 54:29.380 --> 54:39.380 ancestor. Do meaningful work. Do not win the lottery. It will not make you happy. Contemplate your own 54:39.380 --> 54:46.380 mortality for somewhere between 30 seconds and five minutes every day. You can choose. I was at a 54:46.380 --> 54:51.380 conference with Dan Gilbert who is a great psychologist from Harvard who wrote a great book called 54:51.380 --> 54:58.380 Stumbling on Happiness and Dan asked people on the panel, I don't get it. He said we know what will 54:58.380 --> 55:07.380 make us happier. The data is pretty clear. Why don't we do it? Why doesn't everyone do it? I think that's 55:07.380 --> 55:14.380 a really good question. I don't think Dan knew the answer. I'm not sure I do. One possible explanation 55:14.380 --> 55:20.380 is that we get mixed signals at happiness conferences like this. Very valuable. We learn things like 55:20.380 --> 55:26.380 envy is bad. But then we walk out and we're out in the world of advertising and the advertising 55:26.380 --> 55:32.380 industry is nothing if not a giant envy producing machine. So there are contradictions between the 55:32.380 --> 55:39.380 lessons here and the world out there. Also, there's a fundamental question and this may seem a bit odd 55:39.380 --> 55:44.380 to raise this at a happiness conference but do we want to be happy? Do we really want to be happy? 55:44.380 --> 55:51.380 Is that what we want? Quick thought experiment. Close your eyes. Picture a happiness machine. You're 55:51.380 --> 55:57.380 lying down and if you like you can be strapped to this happiness machine. Perfectly safe. FDA approved 55:57.380 --> 56:05.380 but safe anyway. And this happiness machine will just fill you with feelings of bliss and happiness 56:05.380 --> 56:10.380 for the rest of your life. You don't need to do anything. Do you want to be hooked up to the machine? 56:10.380 --> 56:20.380 Yes? No? No. Most people say no with the notable exception of undergrads for some reason say yes. 56:20.380 --> 56:26.380 Honestly. But why would we say no? We just said we want to be happy. We go to happiness conferences. 56:26.380 --> 56:32.380 I think the answer is we want to earn our happiness. We want to experience life's full range to 56:32.380 --> 56:39.380 appreciate those moments of happiness. More than that, I think we want happiness in the old 56:39.380 --> 56:52.380 Aristillian sense with a capital H. We don't want this guy. Smiley face. We must kill him. He must be 56:52.380 --> 57:00.380 killed. And what I'll leave you with is this. Something else to keep in mind when you go out there 57:00.380 --> 57:08.380 and you're talking about happiness. It's a slippery beast and it cannot be tackled head on. John Stuart 57:08.380 --> 57:15.380 Mill, the 19th century British philosopher said ask yourself if you're happy and you cease to be so. 57:15.380 --> 57:23.380 Mill believed, and I love this line, that happiness should be approached sideways like a crab. 57:23.380 --> 57:32.380 And I think there's something to that. Happiness is always a byproduct of a life lived well. 57:32.380 --> 57:39.380 And I think that is something to think about or as the Thais would suggest, not think about. Thank you very much.